I think it will take a very mighty effort to counter your logic here, sir. I expect that people for their various old dog against new tricks habits will make that attempt, but I will tune out their barking. They can't chew through steel.
I am one of those people who has always had a fairly clear understanding of the difference between race and culture. It owes to the fact that I am old enough to remember that my birth certificate said 'Negroid', a term almost nobody uses any longer. Further, mine was one of the first families to celebrate Kwanzaa in the light of Black Consciousness and Black Arts movements. But even then, my family made the distinctions between the philosophical explorations of Dr. Alfred Ligon and the revolutionary politics of the day.
It may not have occurred to many Americans to disambiguate the distinctions of African Americans, personally, spiritually, politically, economically or otherwise until the 80s. Most of us remember the initial disbelief that The Cosby Show was realistic. Certainly by the late 80s, a good number of academics recognized that 'the black community' was a myth and initiated the term 'African-American'. What a relief for us 'Negroids'. Then next, Afrocentrics stepped onto the stage, as well as retro ideological and cultural movements. Some folks were thinking Pan-African thoughts again. Some folks were thinking hiphop might replace jazz, while others blended the two. Neo soul broke out later.
There are countless ways that Americans have identified themselves with various cultural and political movements, but even those ways were not central to their identities. It is only the ever-present authoritarian impulse that tells us we must settle such social questions once and for all. Some even have the nerve to suggest that a racial model from the 17th century should guide our thinking.
Liberty demands that we free ourselves from such narrow constraints. Even old dogs can get off the chain. Don't try to tell me that racial identity is my destiny. I'm glad you're not buying it either.
And of course the key victory of the "authoritarian impulse" has been to give the government and other "authorities" the right to demand we specify our racial background on all sorts of form and applications regardless of the unscientific and nonsensical nature of those categories.
Nov 9, 2022·edited Nov 9, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
I prefer ethnicity to race as an identifying category, as it can include race but also geography, history, culture, language, nationality, etc.
My partner is an Armenian immigrant from Tehran. For centuries, Iran has had an Armenian population that speaks Armenian, and has its own neighorhoods, towns, churches and schools. My partner's native languages are Armenian, which she spoke in her neighborhood and with her family, and Persian. As with many non-Westerners, she does not consider skin color a race. In fact, she insists it isn't. In the United States, Armenians have alternately been labelled as "white," "yellow" and "brown." However, if you ask her what race she is, she'll always respond "I'm Armenian." Perhaps, some Americans will consider her response an evasion of the question, but Armenian is how she identifies and sees herself.
I went to a lecture on Islam by two Somali immigrants. One said that they don't like it when Americans call them black, because "that's not how we view people." In Somalia, everyone is black-skinned, so they don't categorize and differentiate by skin color.
I'm Jewish, and if one asks me what race I am, I respond, "I'm Jewish." Even if with light skin, being Jewish doesn't neartly fit in to the simplistic American color codes.
Judaism is a religion. Like Christianity or Buddhism. If a person were to be asked what race they are, and they said Christian, that would generally be taken as an illogical answer. I have observed though that Jews are more likely to view their religion as a race or ethnicity than Christians or Buddhists. And I suspect that is because Judaism is a religion that racializes its members.
The myth of Abraham and the promise land and the invasions and conquests in the stories of Moses were all based on the notion that Abraham’s imagined descendants, Hebrews, were bonded by the seed of Abraham--a wide biological lineage, a race--and were given right to the land by a god. Thus, one of Judaism’s core myths is racial.
A person definitely shouldn’t choose Judaism as their religion if they are opposed to racialization.
I agree with the original author that folk classification of race is generally bad and irrational, especially “white” and “black”, but there is no way getting around the empirical fact that we all have ancestral lineages of various sorts and that we can logically group people together based on how close and common various ancestors are. And we can call those groups anything we want, whether a “race” or something else, but nothing is going to stop the fact of those biological ancestral relationships existing. Yes, whatever inferences about individuals based on those relationships may not be valid, but the relationships still exist.
Regardless, those ancestral biological lineages are conceptually distinct from a person’s religion. A person’s entire 2000 year biological lineage could be traced to only people who were born in the Han Dynasty of China 2000 years ago, but they grew up in a Detroit suburb attending a private Catholic school and converted to Judaism as a young adult. If asked what their race was, it would be at least somewhat rational to say “Han.” It would be certainly irrational to say “Jewish.”
On the flip side, if a person’s entire biological lineage could be traced to only people who were
born in the Levant 3000 years ago who only spoke Hebrew, they grew up in New York and attended a private Jewish school, and then took upon themselves the 8 Fold Path of Siddhartha, if asked what their race was, it would be somewhat rational to say “Hebrew”. It would be certainly irrational to say “Jewish.”
Well, I have a hard time with what is "rational" in the choice of ideology--secular, religious, racial, tribal, nationalism, etc. The ideologies themselves have coherence but spring out of irrational underpinnings. With respect to my own choices, my parents chose communism. One was Ukrainian Orthodox, the other Jewish, but Uncle Joe Stalin was more inspiring so much so that I was named after one of the greatest mass murderers of his own people. For me, that was an inoculation against the mantra of collective social justice schemes. Life's a bitch and we are left to make sense out of it. In that sense, "rooted cosmopolitanism" is a way to frame sense-making. Of the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam make up nearly 3 billion people. But I chose Judaism because the biblical narratives dwell on the same types of struggles commonly encountered. "Israel" means to struggle with God. I prefer "struggle with "That Thou Art" (to borrow a Hindu phrase). Who the f--k knows if there is a first mover. But it is a useful fiction. And then you get a Hitler who racializes the Jews to get rid of them. So, how do we make sense of that? We fall back on illusions that give meaning. The story of the Exodus gave meaning to numerous peoples, including the Pilgrims who escaped to America and enslaved Africans in America. Weird, very weird. I embrace my irrationality in order to understand my humanity.
“Well, I have a hard time with what is "rational" in the choice of ideology--secular, religious, racial, tribal, nationalism, etc. “
A person’s race isn’t their choice. Just like a person’s sex isn’t their choice--the former though is even less of a choice. Theoretically in the future we could have the technology to alter a person’s DNA, which arguably could result in something like an actual change in sex. There is no conceivable technology that could change a person’s race though, since their “race”, the thing I am referring to, is an abstraction based on a person’s biological lineage, which without time traveling insanity, cannot be altered.
“But I chose Judaism because the biblical narratives dwell on the same types of struggles commonly encountered. “
Both Christianity and Islam view themselves as extensions of the myths and narratives of Judaism. The Christian bible includes the Torah.
“The story of the Exodus gave meaning to numerous peoples, including the Pilgrims who escaped to America and enslaved Africans in America.”
I find the embrace of Christianity by African slaves, some of whom were among my ancestors, to be a tragedy. Very much like exodus, some Christians left persecution in Europe and then proceeded to enslave a different population. The story of exodus has a group of people led by an insane prophet leave a persecuted place and then murder and enslave various ethnic populations. That some ancestors of mine took “meaning” in that is sad. Albeit I imagine a lot of them did and a lot of people today still do because people generally have a superficial knowledge of the story. People are inspired by the story as retold as something different than what’s actually in the book.
The Christian bible (including the Torah) consistently approves of slavery and never explicitly condemns or forbids unjust forms of it. The relationship between Jesus and his followers is one of a Master-Slave. Paul tells people to be “slaves of Christ.” Ancestors of
mine were released from slavery to Christians and then many continued to be slaves to the Christians imaginary god. To this day, the majority of black people are Christians despite the fact it it was Christians who enslaved ancestors of ours and used the perceived authority of the bible to justify it. Christians who eventually helped to abolish slavery did so despite the bible, not because of it. The same way some Christians today who are approving of homosexuality do so despite the bible, not because of it. Bless their souls--but they would be even more blessed if they rejected Christianity.
“Weird, very weird. I embrace my irrationality in order to understand my humanity.”
Well I do agree irrationality is part of humanity, but alone it has a tendency to create hells. I encourage you to try embracing your potential for rationality as well to understand your humanity.
Nov 10, 2022·edited Nov 10, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
I'd like to offer a further thought about your statement: "A person’s race isn’t their choice." One of the readings I use in my class when we turn to identity is a page from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel. She describes sitting under a talal tree. She's with her grandmother and reciting her lineage about 300 years back. This is when she is six years old as I recall. No mention of race. She's Somali and she's told who she is -- she's her lineage. So you could have been there as well lecturing her about "race." Her grandmother would have told her to ignore race (in that context under the talal tree) and stick with who she is -- her lineage. That doesn't mean you're wrong about the statistical (genetics) or color label we call "race," but in that moment it would have had little meaning, if any, to Ayaan or her grandmother. If we moved from that context to me growing up in a housing project in Brooklyn, I would have been closer to what you're talking about. Clearly, our cultures and society (including family, friends, neighbors) provide a lot of the givens, the flexible structures around us. I think Greg Thomas's article asks us to enter into that context with an awareness that can cognize the talal tree and the housing projects, that we, as individuals, can riff upon both in ways that we choose rather than be trapped inside either. That is what I try to get my students to think about when we reflect on Rumi's meditation, On breathing. There's a spiritual journey that organized religion doesn’t always provide. To me, I look for the channels into that spiritual dimension that speaks to humanity. For me, that's often about music. I'd like to hear about your journey betwixt and between the identity categories we are given and those that you have chosen.
"She describes sitting under a talal tree. She's with her grandmother and reciting her lineage about 300 years back. This is when she is six years old as I recall. No mention of race. She's Somali and she's told who she is -- she's her lineage. So you could have been there as well lecturing her about "race." Her grandmother would have told her to ignore race (in that context under the talal tree) and stick with who she is -- her lineage."
And if I was there I would have agreed with her grandmother to ignore race when it comes to "who she is"; I would have also suggested that she ignore her lineage as much as race when it comes to "who she is". I view straight lineage (which involves genetics just as much as race does) as no more morally relevant than race when it comes to how we should choose our culture or religion. But I wouldn't have argued that lineage was rationally meaningless. I can rationally understand straight lineage. It just doesn't matter to what I choose as my culture or religion. What the culture of an ancestor was 300 years ago has no more meaning to me than the culture of someone 4000 years ago who wasn't an ancestor. The culture I embrace is what resonates with my spirit, whatever time or place it happened to originate, including from my self.
"I'd like to hear about your journey betwixt and between the identity categories we are given and those that you have chosen."
That bio includes a discussion of what might be called my "identity categories."
"There's a spiritual journey that organized religion doesn’t always provide. "
There is no popular organized religion that Im aware of that satisfies me spiritually. Among many things, they all reject personal rationality for a submission to some sort of priestly caste or traditional dogma. They exult mental slavery. That is an abomination.
History is useful, but for dealing with current events and problems in the U.S. and the West generally, I think we can be bold enough state that the best of our current societies are those governed by Judeo-Christian ethics as these have evolved over the last half century. Large and powerful segments of our population seem not to accept that idea however. So it may help to acknowledge the value of establishing that idea expleicitly as a desirable hegemonic one.
Good poiints, Joe. So are you ready to demand, as we tried in 2003 in California, the government not be allowwed to request racial information from citizens every time they have to fill out a form?
Excellent points. Call it race, ethnicity, subspecies, or whatever, I suspect you wish tto allow every person to use their own language to define themselves and to dissallow every government from doing so, right?
I always like Your essays, Sir Thomas, but I think this may have been Your best. At least I can say my view of race was broadened a lot. It was very thought-provoking, as indicated by the mostly-great comments. TYTY.
Since all humans are of the Homo sapiens species and form their own family of Hominids or Hominoids, we should identify as that family, not as a race. Within that family there are populations sharing phenotypes (characteristics ) that other populations do not share to any major extent. These are what people today call races. To solve the problem, drop the word "race" and use Hominid to indicate we are all the same species within the same family.
Physical anthropologists and population geneticists are the best source of advice here.
It will be counterproductive to try to banish the word "race." In anthroplogy, race has become the equivalent of what mammalogists, ornithologists, herpetologists, etc. call a subspecies. Classic texts like Carleton Coon's "The Origin of Races" (1962) uses "race" and "species" somewhat interchangeably. All that either term refers to is the genetic differentiation (historically assessed solely on observable physical features) of populations within a species that have been separated from each other for a long enough period of time for the genetic differentiatiion to have taken place. Anthropologists and other biologists have pretty much abandoned the term "subspecies" for human populatioons, primarily for political or sociological reasons.
In North America, the western and eastern populations some tree-nesting bird species differ slightly in coloration reflecting effects of the barrier of the treeless plains and deserts in the center of the countrry. On a smaller scale, there is a ground squirrel with differently identifiable subspecies separated only by a few hundred yards or less -- the width of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.!
In other animal species the visible differences between subspecies are MUCH smaller than those among the original human "races". Think about that. I inow of no studies of genetic change is the western and eastern tree-dwelling birds resulting from the great expansion of tree-dom in the prairies and deserts via the development of suburbs, city parks and state parks.
But certainly the genetic composition of almost every one of our human races or subspecies has been massively altered by invention of the wheel, domestication of the horse, invention of boats and then ships, and the invention of the airplance. Just get government out of the classification business and many other problems will fast be resolved.
As someone who was blessed to have grown up in Queens, NYC, which may just be the most ethnically diverse place on earth, I've always thought of all the different peoples I've encountered as more or less "tribes" (for lack of a better term), and always wondered why we can't jettison the concept of race and think of African Americans as just one more tribe among many.
(I've said this to various black friends over the years and was met mostly with, "That's easy for you to say, you're not black!" but I still think the point holds and I've never meant it as a way to erase African American history or suffering.)
But as a kid I would spend time with say the Colombian tribe, then the Jewish tribe, then the Italians or Armenians or Dominicans then the AA tribe etc etc, and my feeling is eliminating the toxic lie that is Race would bring down barriers and discomfort (on both sides) and allow African Americans to just be one tribe among many instead of this constant blaring symbol of American history and oppression.
But I just don't see this happening in my lifetime. Race is basically a synonym for America at this point, it is the American sickness and obsession, and it still shocks me talking to Americans how just about every issue becomes about Race aka Black v White.
But I commend the writer for having the bravery to even publicly discuss the topic, and at the very least trying to ratchet down racialization is a good idea that could make it just a little bit easier for all of us to live together.
"African Americans" are not a tribe. If you take people who share a race -- that is, a collection of people who share some sort biological ancestral lineage -- and call them a "tribe", you are doing exactly what we shouldnt be doing: tribalizing race. I share a "race" with "African Americans", but that doesn't put me in any tribe with all of them. I don't have a special loyalty to any random "african american" rather than any random "asian american."
We shouldn't jettison the concept of race anymore than the concept of sex. We should just stop caring about people more or less simply because they belong to a particular conceived race -- or sex for that matter. Racial tribalism is the problem, not the fact that some people share biological ancestors nearer to the present day than some other people.
If in Queens people are self-segregating based on conceived race and that is partially due to because they feel allegiance to people who share what they conceive as their race, then they are generally failing at the "cosmopolitan" ideal.
I think my conception of "tribe" implies less a locked cage and more of a home you can enter or exit at will, or at least a place where you feel safer and more comfortable. (But really in my comment I just meant it as a synonym for any group or nation or culture.)
There is an interesting tension here, I think, in the idea(l) of not preferencing anyone based on a possibly shared background/ethnicity, vs the social truth/reality that we all do have a higher comfort level around our own people.
I'm Italian-American, and while if someone appeared at my door right now and asked for $ bc we have a shared ethnic background I would tell them to get lost (or as my tribe would put it: Get the hell outta here!), but at the same time when I'm in an Italian-American neighborhood or restaurant etc, I do feel a sense of joy and comfort from being around "my people". (But this doesn't mean I do this at anyone else's expense or because I think my tribe is any way superior to anyone else's.)
"We should just stop caring about people more or less simply because they belong to a particular conceived race" is something I couldn't agree w more, but I think the purpose of this piece was to try to get there by rejecting the toxic idea of race (which has become oppressive), and my idea was to make AAs just another group/people/tribe, not because I want to erect some other system but because it's a simple fact that we all have some tribal affiliation, whether we want to or not or admit it or not, and I don't think there's any way around this (except closing our eyes and singing John Lennon's "Imagine").
So my thought was/is that treating AAs as just one other group/tribe/people among many could possibly hopefully defuse social tension and bring down barriers.
"There is an interesting tension here, I think, in the idea(l) of not preferencing anyone based on a possibly shared background/ethnicity, vs the social truth/reality that we all do have a higher comfort level around our own people."
That truth/reality may apply to you, but it does not apply to everyone, including me. For one thing, "African Americans" or "European Americans" or "Mulattos" or any conceived racial or ethnic group are not "my people". "My people" are the people who share my values and the people who I love and who love me--the people in my innermost circle of sympathy.
" I want to erect some other system but because it's a simple fact that we all have some tribal affiliation, whether we want to or not or admit it or not, and I don't think there's any way around this (except closing our eyes and singing John Lennon's "Imagine")."
I have absolutely no racial tribal affiliation. That is a simple fact. Some "tribal sympathy" I do have besides for those people who share my values and people in my innermost circle of sympathy includes cats and Americans, in that order of strength. A racial group does not exist as any circle of sympathy for me.
"but at the same time when I'm in an Italian-American neighborhood or restaurant etc, I do feel a sense of joy and comfort from being around "my people". (But this doesn't mean I do this at anyone else's expense or because I think my tribe is any way superior to anyone else's.)"
I do not have any analogous sense of joy or comfort when being in neighborhoods where people of a particular race or "ethnicity" is predominant. I will wager though that your comfort and joy may have little do with race and more to do with familiar culture you appreciate and nostalgia. I imagine there are places in Italy you could go that just wouldnt do the same thing for you But, maybe Im wrong.
Another stark example of this could be from an African-American's perspective. They could potentially have fuzzy feelings when being in certain neighborhoods that are predominantly black, if its the sort of neighborhood they grew up in, but going to *any* African country would be a huge culture shock, and Id expect they wouldn't feel the same fuzzy feelings. If they do; if they feel "connected to their roots" -- they are projecting some serious irrational racial tribalization.
If you were in one of those Italian American restaurants and you were talking to someone there thinking "oh this person is one of my people" and then you learned he was a Greek American who was adopted by an Italian American family-- would you then feel differently about him? If not, then whatever the tribal affiliation you have is not racial. Congratulations. If you do feel differently about him, well, then you are certainly a racial tribalist. Booo.
"So my thought was/is that treating AAs as just one other group/tribe/people among many could possibly hopefully defuse social tension and bring down barriers."
I think that will just continue the same vice -- racial tribalism. One of the biggest vices among some black people, for example, is precisely the attitude that black people ought to be particularly loyal to other black people and be loyal to whatever those black people think is the proper True black culture. It is an oppressive perspective. It creates barriers.
" but I think the purpose of this piece was to try to get there by rejecting the toxic idea of race"
The simple idea of race is not toxic; racial tribalism is toxic. The notion that we have ancestral lineages that more or less overlap with one another and we can arbitrarily draw lines around these relationships and attach names to them is completely benign until people start making irrational judgements about people and loyalties to people based on how we draw the lines. And since those relationships are simply reality, even if it were toxic, I do not think a good solution would be to deny reality. Im generally opposed to reality denial.
Thanks for this clear exposition. As a neuroscientist I understand race as a political construct and would appreciate an opportunity to contribute to dismantle it too.
When I've taught about identity in cultural anthropology, a philosophy class titled human nature, in humanities or indigenous religions, I know I'm dealing with a puzzle--individual and shared. I end up pretty much as where Greg Thomas does, but I'm a bit more devious. For example, take the average family size (actually average household size). Let's say it is 2.2 people in 2020 in the country X. I ask my students have they ever seen a family (or household) with 2.2 people. No, of course not. But we talk about the average family all the time. There's the analytic way of statistically slicing and dicing large populations and then there's what we encounter in our lives. I'm always wondering whether our conversations on identity slip between the two -- the one that really doesn't exist (that analytic abstraction) and what we believe as we encounter others. Here, I've open the door to my devious teaching style. Let's move on to a meditation from the 13th century mystic , Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī -- or simply Rumi. He denies every facet of his identity in order to get to the true reality:
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion
or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any
origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
[?????]
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.
Let's note two things. First, we can meditate ourselves out of all our identities to that "breathing human being." Most likely for a nanosecond or two. Our lived reality, psychologically and culturally defined for each of us, sucks us back into the stereotypes we've grown into. LSD also helps, but that's another story. Second, I added in some question marks [????]. You can see what's missing in all those identities that Rumi conjured up for us. He doesn't have "race" or the colors of "black" and "white." This helps us realize that our insertion of "race" into his meditation would give us our ethnocentric perspective. So, of course, we step outside that identity configuration, work at it for more than those nanoseconds, but we also resonate with forms (music, writing, family, the way we walk, etc.). I like Thomas's "rooted cosmopolitanism" where we can step in and out of cookie-cutter identity stereotypes.
Nov 14, 2022·edited Nov 14, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
As a graduate student in the 1990s-- more than fifty years after Ashley Montagu wrote Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1942)-- I was reading and teaching Ralph Ellison's "Little Man at Chehaw Station" (1978), David Hollinger's unsurpassed Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (1995), and countless critiques of "race" that concluded the race concept was hopelessly incoherent and inevitably oppressive-- a social construct we'd all be better off without. The revival of the race concept in recent years has been disheartening, given the intellectual progress made against it in earlier decades.
From an historical point of view, "race" was above all a biological concept identical to the concept of "subspecies," i.e. the observed fact when isolated from each other in different regions for long periods of time the populations within a given species can become visibly distinct from each (while still being completely interfertile). Biologists then can assign different subspecific epithets to the visually distinct groups. The literature of this topic is extremely misleading because so many pundits, including Montagu, have not understood some elementary matters. In other animals, the differences used to distinguish subspecies are very much smaller than the differences among the races of man.
Historically, going back to the 1600s and 1700s, even the most "biological" understandings of "race" were incoherently intermingled with ideas about culture and the environment. The idea that race is both "color" and "culture" survives to this day.
When clear, simple "biological understandings" are "incoherently intermingled" with anything else, then blames the "incoherent minglers" (often academics!) and those persons who are weak critical thinkers, i.e. gullible.
That an idea "survives to this day" is no indicator of its truth or validity. Consider the mythologies of all the world's religions.
David Hollinger's Postethnic America does a good job explaining this mistaken but widespread conflation of color and culture. The survival of an idea is certainly no indicator of its truth. We are in agreement.
I’m a big fan of Roland Fryer, but the study that you referenced that at least 1/3 of the gap between white and black workers is due to discrimination was always weird to me because it was a major outlier among the studies produced examining pay gaps with the proper controls. On a side note, in the study they say 7% of pay gap is due to discrimination, which is weird because they just said at least 33%. Even with that June E. O’Neil found that in the job market, region, test scores and all other controls reveals that 1-2% is due to racial discrimination which was backed up by Wilfred Reilly in his research. There was a recent study in 2020 by shrm that found the exact same thing, while controlling for everything except test scores or IQ scores, which does matter though I don’t believe much because controlling for education and experience filters out incompetent people. If anyone can help me answer this question, why do you think Rolands’ results are so different than these other studies, which are seemingly consistent? Other than that your article is well written and it makes a phenomenal case for deracialization, I have no complaints.
Is technology culture? Is one more important than the other?
Suppose SETI, Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, announced that they were picking up obviously artificial signals, something like an alien Morse code. But it was from 300 light years away. So somebody had radio 200 years before humans.
They must know something about physics and creating technology. But what about culture? They could not know Shakespeare, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus Christ. What would culture matter? They probably must have some but totally inhuman.
If we can't deal with this technology what will culture matter? Maybe we need intellectual segregation but assimilate the science and technology.
"If throughout the span of recorded history, human beings had always sorted based on external physical characteristics and ancestry, then a strong case could be made that this is simply the way humans classify one another. However, although the cognitive practice of categorization is common among humans, the racialization chart above makes clear that the practice was codified in the United States in the 1700s. "
While I'll concede that particular abstractions and "codifications" about race became more prominent at certain periods in history, such as the "white" and "black" abstraction, we find examples of "racialization" -- in the sense of conceiving a group of people as belonging to a common biological ancestral lineage of some sort or another throughout human history and anthropology. Perhaps most relevant to "western civilization" is the ancient greeks and jews, where we find lots of concern about genealogies and blood lines. Here is a quote from Herodotus, The Histories, where the Athenians are speaking to the Spartans:
"Such was their answer to Alexander, but to the Spartan envoys they said, “It was most human that the Lacedaemonians should fear our making an agreement with the barbarian. We think that it is an ignoble thing to be afraid, especially since we know the Athenian temper to be such that there is nowhere on earth such store of gold or such territory of surpassing fairness and excellence that the gift of it should win us to take the Persian part and enslave Hellas. [2] For there are many great reasons why we should not do this, even if we so desired; first and foremost, the burning and destruction of the adornments and temples of our gods, whom we are constrained to avenge to the utmost rather than make pacts with the perpetrator of these things, and next the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life, to all of which it would not befit the Athenians to be false." Hdt. 8.144
"Kinship in blood" is racial. The Athenians viewed the Spartans as belonging to the same blood, ie race -- the Greeks. And because of that, they suggested they would behave differently toward them. In essence a kind of racial tribalism that we still see today among people who express special loyalty to people who they think share their race. I think that is immoral, but it has existed for all of human history and through many human civilizations, from the "east" to the "west." "White" people didn't invent it in the 1700s.
And of course when it comes to Judaism, its foundational myth of Abraham and the "Chosen People" is racial. In the mythology, Abraham's biological descendants are promised land by Jehovah. Eventually, as the story goes, Moses guided the Hebrews, who were supposedly descended from Abraham, out of Egypt and into the promise land, where he and his followers proceeded to brutally murder and enslave various tribes / ethnic groups that were already living there. Racialization is *biblical*. Just as slavery is.
"On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, "'To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.'"
Genesis 15:18–21
'When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire. "For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth."
Deuteronomy 7:1-6
People were even committing racialized genocide long before the abstractions of "white" and "black" were invented. It is even recorded in the bible that the imagined god that most Americans, including most black people, worship commanded Moses to do it.
I agree with you that people should not embrace racial tribalization, but I think race as a concept is coherent insofar as it refers to the notion of some sort of wide biological lineage. Hence, the notion of a "human race" would be valid since it is the superset of all possible sets of biological lineages. But its also logically and empirically valid to arbitrarily split apart and group biological lineages and assign them a name. It might not mean much when it comes to making judgements about individuals, and it should not be used to form personal attachments, loyalties, and allegiances -- but those relationships we have to ancestors are real. Hence, "race", is a rationally coherent concept. I might think the notion of a "black" race to be morally and personally meaningless to what I value, and think that the term "black" to refer to a race of people none of whom are actually truly "black" to be a stupid choice of word as is "white" for the same reason; nonetheless, its still rational to believe that I am more "racially" related to people who are now commonly labeled as "black" than I am racially related to people who are now labeled "asian". Although, Im just as racially related to people who are now commonly labeled as "white" as I am to people who are now commonly labeled as "black." Some I will be more and some I will be less--if "racially related" simply refers to the distance, for example, before we have a common ancestor.
Thus, I think "deracialization" is somewhat limited in its rationality. Some of what you said makes sense and I support, such as decoupling culture and race, and untribalizing race--but the concept of race itself, by whatever name, can logically point to a legitimate empirical reality when formulated carefully. The "science" that is connected to and performed regarding race has tended to be garbage, and continues to be, but that is a separate consideration than whether race is rationally meaningful. Regardless of whether it is rationally meaningfully, it should not be spiritually or morally meaningful. A religion or spirituality or moral system that promotes racial tribalism should be forsaken.
Nov 10, 2022·edited Nov 10, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
Who owns the land and how did they get it? I consider land ownership to be a legal delusion just like the ownership of human beings. As long as non-white people have to work for white people to get the money to pay them to live on the land that they own/stole why should I give a damn about this racialization pseudo-intellectual crap?
It gives people with degrees something ineffectual to talk about.
Rights to land *will* be determined, ultimately, through violence and the threat of violence. I do think there are more or less virtuous ways of deciding whether violence or the threat of it will be used to protect someone's right or remove it. If there is any land in particular that you desire, perhaps you could explain to everyone why you ought to have the right to use it without others interfering or competing with that desire. And perhaps you didn't know, but some white people have to work for some black people to get the money to pay the black people to live on land that they own. Are those white people as justified as yourself to outrage? Or is land held unjustly only by white people in your mind?
The world population did not reach 1 billion until about 1800. It has tripled in my lifetime and is nearly 8 billion.
Since ownership of land is really just an idea in people's heads it should more precisely be called the control of land. It is ironically amusing that Ayn Rand came to the US from Russia with this Objectivism saying that people shouldn't just take things but that was 30 years after the Indian Wars.
We have this talk about right to life and liberty but people have to live somewhere. Maybe there should be a limit on land ownership in terms of number of locations and size.
On the global scale it is not just about White people but there is no getting around the quantity of land controlled by whites due to the last 500 years of history and technology. I do find it curious that 700 year old double-entry accounting is not mandatory in the schools even for white kids.
What does it matter if its called "ownership" or "control of land"? Personally I think ownership is fine, and it is only 3 syllables rather than 4.
What does it matter that people need to live somewhere? Do they need to live at any particular place? Would you be satisfied with land on some yet inhabited Island?
Although I am skeptical that limiting the amount of land a person can own will ensure that people have a desirable place to live, let us entertain the idea. Land ownership is limited in size -- not all land is equal in desirability though. Not all land is flowing with milk and honey. There is natural very prime real estate. Having 1 acre of prime real estate could be better than 1000 acres of garbage real estate. How would you like to be given a beach front piece of 10 acres of land in Antartica? Or would you prefer a beach front piece of 10 acres of land in Santa Monica, California?
The vast majority of land owned by white people is owned by a very small fraction of all white people -- if by "white people" you refer to people who have European ancestry. I do not understand your apparent anger at "white people" owning land, when most white people own very little of it or none at all. And, given the possession of most of land by a small percentage of people (and it is probably substantially multi racial; perhaps you are forgetting most of asia, much of africa, and much of south america; especially if you break down things more narrowly than "white"; like remember, Germany fought a war against other white people because it thought its particular slice of white people were superior and deserving of all that land it was trying to get) -- whats to be done about it? If you had the power to divy up all the land possessed by the Royal Family of Great Britain, how would you do it? Lottery? Giving land to random people whose ancestors may have been harmed by Great Britain? Who deserves the finest land of the Queen?
Regardless, I think if you are going to be upset about who possesses land today, I think you should be a lot more nuanced than looking at the race of those people. "White" people oppress "white" people. "Black" people oppress "black" people. Racial anger is irrational. And politically it is a distraction.
Nov 12, 2022·edited Nov 12, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
You can own an automobile. We all know that automobile did not exist for thousands of years before you were born and will not exist for thousands of years after you are dead. It doesn't matter very much how badly you treat the car. Humans could have to survive on this planet for the next 100,000 years.
What uninhabited island is there that is actually habitable? 8 billion people and rising. What would happen to the price of land with limits on amounts per person. The super rich could not price the land out of reach of the non-rich. That is the point.
That happened before I was born. But that does not mean that I do not understand that the state of the world is the result of the past. My high school history book was about 400 pages. The Amerinds got 2 pages. I remember a graph of their population. It was in the upper right corner of the left hand page.
Didn't I already make a comment about accounting not being mandatory? Not even for the white kids. See:
The Screwing of the Average Man by David Hapgood
It is not my fault if you get an exaggerated idea about my supposed "anger" at white people. These comments have their limits and I am not going to type forever on a phone.
Your references for sources of anger at white people are as rational and meaningful as a white supremacist referencing fbi violent crime statistics as source their of anger at black people.
But perhaps anger is not the correct word, but rather hate or animosity ? But you are welcome to tell me what you feel toward “white people”. I don’t think there is anything wrong with anger or hate or animosity, in essence, I just think it should be directed at reasonable targets. Nuance is usually good.
Limiting the the amount of land per person would not allow the “non rich” to purchase whatever land they wanted. It may affect land prices, but it’s not going to enable all the “non rich” to buy beach front property in Santa Monica.
It might even have undesired side effects, such as turning lots of land undeveloped or degenerate land. For land to produce and provide value, it must be developed, and not just anyone has the resources, knowledge, or skills to do that or to do it as well as others. And when land becomes wildly unproductive, that will actually increase the costs of stuff in general, and may actually make the “non rich” even less “non rich”.
Im not against land ownership limits in essence though, there might be some limitations that could do a lot of overall good and be more just. It simply isn’t without substantial risks if done badly. I’d have to think about the details more.
Feelings are irrelevant! We are stuck in the global power games that involve technology and economics and sometimes go military.
Ever heard of: Black Man's Burden by Mack Reynolds
It's free in Project Gutenberg. Oh, Reynolds was a white guy, raised in a socialist family.
I consider technology, economics and planned obsolescence more important than social arguments about race. European culture is designed to screw over most white people. Watching the Russian army in the Ukraine is almost funny.
The Screwing of the Average Man by David Hapgood
Black kids don't get enough practical support from their elders. What did MLK & Malcolm X ever say about science, technology and economics?
While your discussion is mainly focused on the US context I think you make an important point that applies around the world. Thank you Greg for articulating so clearly what I've felt for a while. The idea of "race" as biological or cultural identity makes less and less sense as more and more threads of human genetics and human culture entwine with the high mobility of humans in the modern age. This will keep happening like it has been for millennia to such a point where these arbitrary distinctions of "black" & "white" are not only meaningless, they're patently false.
We can see an example of this in the absurd distinction of black & white in the census question (image in the article) where it lists "Egyptian" as among the choices of the "White" races - Egypt is in Africa and has a very ancient culture rooted in historical Africa. And there has been at least 3000 years of various ethnicities and genetic lines mixing in Egypt since it was the centre of the civilised world for so long. I know that a lot of political-intellectual forces have tried to deny this so they can claim Ancient Egyptian culture for the "White Man" and I guess this weird distortion in the census is a left over of that ... My point is that I see a lot of "dark-skinned" Egyptian-born people in Egypt and elsewhere, and being such a cultural and biological "melting pot" how can Egyptians be classified as "Whites"?
I understand the necessity to reclaim identities that have been culturally maligned and devalued, and yet if we also work towards societies where no economic or social advantages accrue to any based on their "race" then there is no need to identify as a race. And I agree with you that this doesn't eradicate cultural or ethnic lineages - but we do get to release stereotypes and ideas that have reached their use-by-date.
I think it will take a very mighty effort to counter your logic here, sir. I expect that people for their various old dog against new tricks habits will make that attempt, but I will tune out their barking. They can't chew through steel.
I am one of those people who has always had a fairly clear understanding of the difference between race and culture. It owes to the fact that I am old enough to remember that my birth certificate said 'Negroid', a term almost nobody uses any longer. Further, mine was one of the first families to celebrate Kwanzaa in the light of Black Consciousness and Black Arts movements. But even then, my family made the distinctions between the philosophical explorations of Dr. Alfred Ligon and the revolutionary politics of the day.
It may not have occurred to many Americans to disambiguate the distinctions of African Americans, personally, spiritually, politically, economically or otherwise until the 80s. Most of us remember the initial disbelief that The Cosby Show was realistic. Certainly by the late 80s, a good number of academics recognized that 'the black community' was a myth and initiated the term 'African-American'. What a relief for us 'Negroids'. Then next, Afrocentrics stepped onto the stage, as well as retro ideological and cultural movements. Some folks were thinking Pan-African thoughts again. Some folks were thinking hiphop might replace jazz, while others blended the two. Neo soul broke out later.
There are countless ways that Americans have identified themselves with various cultural and political movements, but even those ways were not central to their identities. It is only the ever-present authoritarian impulse that tells us we must settle such social questions once and for all. Some even have the nerve to suggest that a racial model from the 17th century should guide our thinking.
Liberty demands that we free ourselves from such narrow constraints. Even old dogs can get off the chain. Don't try to tell me that racial identity is my destiny. I'm glad you're not buying it either.
Another great one, Sir.
And of course the key victory of the "authoritarian impulse" has been to give the government and other "authorities" the right to demand we specify our racial background on all sorts of form and applications regardless of the unscientific and nonsensical nature of those categories.
I prefer ethnicity to race as an identifying category, as it can include race but also geography, history, culture, language, nationality, etc.
My partner is an Armenian immigrant from Tehran. For centuries, Iran has had an Armenian population that speaks Armenian, and has its own neighorhoods, towns, churches and schools. My partner's native languages are Armenian, which she spoke in her neighborhood and with her family, and Persian. As with many non-Westerners, she does not consider skin color a race. In fact, she insists it isn't. In the United States, Armenians have alternately been labelled as "white," "yellow" and "brown." However, if you ask her what race she is, she'll always respond "I'm Armenian." Perhaps, some Americans will consider her response an evasion of the question, but Armenian is how she identifies and sees herself.
I went to a lecture on Islam by two Somali immigrants. One said that they don't like it when Americans call them black, because "that's not how we view people." In Somalia, everyone is black-skinned, so they don't categorize and differentiate by skin color.
I'm Jewish, and if one asks me what race I am, I respond, "I'm Jewish." Even if with light skin, being Jewish doesn't neartly fit in to the simplistic American color codes.
Judaism is a religion. Like Christianity or Buddhism. If a person were to be asked what race they are, and they said Christian, that would generally be taken as an illogical answer. I have observed though that Jews are more likely to view their religion as a race or ethnicity than Christians or Buddhists. And I suspect that is because Judaism is a religion that racializes its members.
The myth of Abraham and the promise land and the invasions and conquests in the stories of Moses were all based on the notion that Abraham’s imagined descendants, Hebrews, were bonded by the seed of Abraham--a wide biological lineage, a race--and were given right to the land by a god. Thus, one of Judaism’s core myths is racial.
A person definitely shouldn’t choose Judaism as their religion if they are opposed to racialization.
I agree with the original author that folk classification of race is generally bad and irrational, especially “white” and “black”, but there is no way getting around the empirical fact that we all have ancestral lineages of various sorts and that we can logically group people together based on how close and common various ancestors are. And we can call those groups anything we want, whether a “race” or something else, but nothing is going to stop the fact of those biological ancestral relationships existing. Yes, whatever inferences about individuals based on those relationships may not be valid, but the relationships still exist.
Regardless, those ancestral biological lineages are conceptually distinct from a person’s religion. A person’s entire 2000 year biological lineage could be traced to only people who were born in the Han Dynasty of China 2000 years ago, but they grew up in a Detroit suburb attending a private Catholic school and converted to Judaism as a young adult. If asked what their race was, it would be at least somewhat rational to say “Han.” It would be certainly irrational to say “Jewish.”
On the flip side, if a person’s entire biological lineage could be traced to only people who were
born in the Levant 3000 years ago who only spoke Hebrew, they grew up in New York and attended a private Jewish school, and then took upon themselves the 8 Fold Path of Siddhartha, if asked what their race was, it would be somewhat rational to say “Hebrew”. It would be certainly irrational to say “Jewish.”
Well, I have a hard time with what is "rational" in the choice of ideology--secular, religious, racial, tribal, nationalism, etc. The ideologies themselves have coherence but spring out of irrational underpinnings. With respect to my own choices, my parents chose communism. One was Ukrainian Orthodox, the other Jewish, but Uncle Joe Stalin was more inspiring so much so that I was named after one of the greatest mass murderers of his own people. For me, that was an inoculation against the mantra of collective social justice schemes. Life's a bitch and we are left to make sense out of it. In that sense, "rooted cosmopolitanism" is a way to frame sense-making. Of the three Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam make up nearly 3 billion people. But I chose Judaism because the biblical narratives dwell on the same types of struggles commonly encountered. "Israel" means to struggle with God. I prefer "struggle with "That Thou Art" (to borrow a Hindu phrase). Who the f--k knows if there is a first mover. But it is a useful fiction. And then you get a Hitler who racializes the Jews to get rid of them. So, how do we make sense of that? We fall back on illusions that give meaning. The story of the Exodus gave meaning to numerous peoples, including the Pilgrims who escaped to America and enslaved Africans in America. Weird, very weird. I embrace my irrationality in order to understand my humanity.
“Well, I have a hard time with what is "rational" in the choice of ideology--secular, religious, racial, tribal, nationalism, etc. “
A person’s race isn’t their choice. Just like a person’s sex isn’t their choice--the former though is even less of a choice. Theoretically in the future we could have the technology to alter a person’s DNA, which arguably could result in something like an actual change in sex. There is no conceivable technology that could change a person’s race though, since their “race”, the thing I am referring to, is an abstraction based on a person’s biological lineage, which without time traveling insanity, cannot be altered.
“But I chose Judaism because the biblical narratives dwell on the same types of struggles commonly encountered. “
Both Christianity and Islam view themselves as extensions of the myths and narratives of Judaism. The Christian bible includes the Torah.
“The story of the Exodus gave meaning to numerous peoples, including the Pilgrims who escaped to America and enslaved Africans in America.”
I find the embrace of Christianity by African slaves, some of whom were among my ancestors, to be a tragedy. Very much like exodus, some Christians left persecution in Europe and then proceeded to enslave a different population. The story of exodus has a group of people led by an insane prophet leave a persecuted place and then murder and enslave various ethnic populations. That some ancestors of mine took “meaning” in that is sad. Albeit I imagine a lot of them did and a lot of people today still do because people generally have a superficial knowledge of the story. People are inspired by the story as retold as something different than what’s actually in the book.
The Christian bible (including the Torah) consistently approves of slavery and never explicitly condemns or forbids unjust forms of it. The relationship between Jesus and his followers is one of a Master-Slave. Paul tells people to be “slaves of Christ.” Ancestors of
mine were released from slavery to Christians and then many continued to be slaves to the Christians imaginary god. To this day, the majority of black people are Christians despite the fact it it was Christians who enslaved ancestors of ours and used the perceived authority of the bible to justify it. Christians who eventually helped to abolish slavery did so despite the bible, not because of it. The same way some Christians today who are approving of homosexuality do so despite the bible, not because of it. Bless their souls--but they would be even more blessed if they rejected Christianity.
“Weird, very weird. I embrace my irrationality in order to understand my humanity.”
Well I do agree irrationality is part of humanity, but alone it has a tendency to create hells. I encourage you to try embracing your potential for rationality as well to understand your humanity.
I'd like to offer a further thought about your statement: "A person’s race isn’t their choice." One of the readings I use in my class when we turn to identity is a page from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book, Infidel. She describes sitting under a talal tree. She's with her grandmother and reciting her lineage about 300 years back. This is when she is six years old as I recall. No mention of race. She's Somali and she's told who she is -- she's her lineage. So you could have been there as well lecturing her about "race." Her grandmother would have told her to ignore race (in that context under the talal tree) and stick with who she is -- her lineage. That doesn't mean you're wrong about the statistical (genetics) or color label we call "race," but in that moment it would have had little meaning, if any, to Ayaan or her grandmother. If we moved from that context to me growing up in a housing project in Brooklyn, I would have been closer to what you're talking about. Clearly, our cultures and society (including family, friends, neighbors) provide a lot of the givens, the flexible structures around us. I think Greg Thomas's article asks us to enter into that context with an awareness that can cognize the talal tree and the housing projects, that we, as individuals, can riff upon both in ways that we choose rather than be trapped inside either. That is what I try to get my students to think about when we reflect on Rumi's meditation, On breathing. There's a spiritual journey that organized religion doesn’t always provide. To me, I look for the channels into that spiritual dimension that speaks to humanity. For me, that's often about music. I'd like to hear about your journey betwixt and between the identity categories we are given and those that you have chosen.
"She describes sitting under a talal tree. She's with her grandmother and reciting her lineage about 300 years back. This is when she is six years old as I recall. No mention of race. She's Somali and she's told who she is -- she's her lineage. So you could have been there as well lecturing her about "race." Her grandmother would have told her to ignore race (in that context under the talal tree) and stick with who she is -- her lineage."
And if I was there I would have agreed with her grandmother to ignore race when it comes to "who she is"; I would have also suggested that she ignore her lineage as much as race when it comes to "who she is". I view straight lineage (which involves genetics just as much as race does) as no more morally relevant than race when it comes to how we should choose our culture or religion. But I wouldn't have argued that lineage was rationally meaningless. I can rationally understand straight lineage. It just doesn't matter to what I choose as my culture or religion. What the culture of an ancestor was 300 years ago has no more meaning to me than the culture of someone 4000 years ago who wasn't an ancestor. The culture I embrace is what resonates with my spirit, whatever time or place it happened to originate, including from my self.
"I'd like to hear about your journey betwixt and between the identity categories we are given and those that you have chosen."
You can read about me here: https://minorityreport.substack.com/about
That bio includes a discussion of what might be called my "identity categories."
"There's a spiritual journey that organized religion doesn’t always provide. "
There is no popular organized religion that Im aware of that satisfies me spiritually. Among many things, they all reject personal rationality for a submission to some sort of priestly caste or traditional dogma. They exult mental slavery. That is an abomination.
History is useful, but for dealing with current events and problems in the U.S. and the West generally, I think we can be bold enough state that the best of our current societies are those governed by Judeo-Christian ethics as these have evolved over the last half century. Large and powerful segments of our population seem not to accept that idea however. So it may help to acknowledge the value of establishing that idea expleicitly as a desirable hegemonic one.
Good poiints, Joe. So are you ready to demand, as we tried in 2003 in California, the government not be allowwed to request racial information from citizens every time they have to fill out a form?
Excellent points. Call it race, ethnicity, subspecies, or whatever, I suspect you wish tto allow every person to use their own language to define themselves and to dissallow every government from doing so, right?
I always like Your essays, Sir Thomas, but I think this may have been Your best. At least I can say my view of race was broadened a lot. It was very thought-provoking, as indicated by the mostly-great comments. TYTY.
beautifully written and conceived. A must read.
Since all humans are of the Homo sapiens species and form their own family of Hominids or Hominoids, we should identify as that family, not as a race. Within that family there are populations sharing phenotypes (characteristics ) that other populations do not share to any major extent. These are what people today call races. To solve the problem, drop the word "race" and use Hominid to indicate we are all the same species within the same family.
Physical anthropologists and population geneticists are the best source of advice here.
It will be counterproductive to try to banish the word "race." In anthroplogy, race has become the equivalent of what mammalogists, ornithologists, herpetologists, etc. call a subspecies. Classic texts like Carleton Coon's "The Origin of Races" (1962) uses "race" and "species" somewhat interchangeably. All that either term refers to is the genetic differentiation (historically assessed solely on observable physical features) of populations within a species that have been separated from each other for a long enough period of time for the genetic differentiatiion to have taken place. Anthropologists and other biologists have pretty much abandoned the term "subspecies" for human populatioons, primarily for political or sociological reasons.
In North America, the western and eastern populations some tree-nesting bird species differ slightly in coloration reflecting effects of the barrier of the treeless plains and deserts in the center of the countrry. On a smaller scale, there is a ground squirrel with differently identifiable subspecies separated only by a few hundred yards or less -- the width of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.!
In other animal species the visible differences between subspecies are MUCH smaller than those among the original human "races". Think about that. I inow of no studies of genetic change is the western and eastern tree-dwelling birds resulting from the great expansion of tree-dom in the prairies and deserts via the development of suburbs, city parks and state parks.
But certainly the genetic composition of almost every one of our human races or subspecies has been massively altered by invention of the wheel, domestication of the horse, invention of boats and then ships, and the invention of the airplance. Just get government out of the classification business and many other problems will fast be resolved.
As someone who was blessed to have grown up in Queens, NYC, which may just be the most ethnically diverse place on earth, I've always thought of all the different peoples I've encountered as more or less "tribes" (for lack of a better term), and always wondered why we can't jettison the concept of race and think of African Americans as just one more tribe among many.
(I've said this to various black friends over the years and was met mostly with, "That's easy for you to say, you're not black!" but I still think the point holds and I've never meant it as a way to erase African American history or suffering.)
But as a kid I would spend time with say the Colombian tribe, then the Jewish tribe, then the Italians or Armenians or Dominicans then the AA tribe etc etc, and my feeling is eliminating the toxic lie that is Race would bring down barriers and discomfort (on both sides) and allow African Americans to just be one tribe among many instead of this constant blaring symbol of American history and oppression.
But I just don't see this happening in my lifetime. Race is basically a synonym for America at this point, it is the American sickness and obsession, and it still shocks me talking to Americans how just about every issue becomes about Race aka Black v White.
But I commend the writer for having the bravery to even publicly discuss the topic, and at the very least trying to ratchet down racialization is a good idea that could make it just a little bit easier for all of us to live together.
"African Americans" are not a tribe. If you take people who share a race -- that is, a collection of people who share some sort biological ancestral lineage -- and call them a "tribe", you are doing exactly what we shouldnt be doing: tribalizing race. I share a "race" with "African Americans", but that doesn't put me in any tribe with all of them. I don't have a special loyalty to any random "african american" rather than any random "asian american."
We shouldn't jettison the concept of race anymore than the concept of sex. We should just stop caring about people more or less simply because they belong to a particular conceived race -- or sex for that matter. Racial tribalism is the problem, not the fact that some people share biological ancestors nearer to the present day than some other people.
If in Queens people are self-segregating based on conceived race and that is partially due to because they feel allegiance to people who share what they conceive as their race, then they are generally failing at the "cosmopolitan" ideal.
I think my conception of "tribe" implies less a locked cage and more of a home you can enter or exit at will, or at least a place where you feel safer and more comfortable. (But really in my comment I just meant it as a synonym for any group or nation or culture.)
There is an interesting tension here, I think, in the idea(l) of not preferencing anyone based on a possibly shared background/ethnicity, vs the social truth/reality that we all do have a higher comfort level around our own people.
I'm Italian-American, and while if someone appeared at my door right now and asked for $ bc we have a shared ethnic background I would tell them to get lost (or as my tribe would put it: Get the hell outta here!), but at the same time when I'm in an Italian-American neighborhood or restaurant etc, I do feel a sense of joy and comfort from being around "my people". (But this doesn't mean I do this at anyone else's expense or because I think my tribe is any way superior to anyone else's.)
"We should just stop caring about people more or less simply because they belong to a particular conceived race" is something I couldn't agree w more, but I think the purpose of this piece was to try to get there by rejecting the toxic idea of race (which has become oppressive), and my idea was to make AAs just another group/people/tribe, not because I want to erect some other system but because it's a simple fact that we all have some tribal affiliation, whether we want to or not or admit it or not, and I don't think there's any way around this (except closing our eyes and singing John Lennon's "Imagine").
So my thought was/is that treating AAs as just one other group/tribe/people among many could possibly hopefully defuse social tension and bring down barriers.
"There is an interesting tension here, I think, in the idea(l) of not preferencing anyone based on a possibly shared background/ethnicity, vs the social truth/reality that we all do have a higher comfort level around our own people."
That truth/reality may apply to you, but it does not apply to everyone, including me. For one thing, "African Americans" or "European Americans" or "Mulattos" or any conceived racial or ethnic group are not "my people". "My people" are the people who share my values and the people who I love and who love me--the people in my innermost circle of sympathy.
" I want to erect some other system but because it's a simple fact that we all have some tribal affiliation, whether we want to or not or admit it or not, and I don't think there's any way around this (except closing our eyes and singing John Lennon's "Imagine")."
I have absolutely no racial tribal affiliation. That is a simple fact. Some "tribal sympathy" I do have besides for those people who share my values and people in my innermost circle of sympathy includes cats and Americans, in that order of strength. A racial group does not exist as any circle of sympathy for me.
"but at the same time when I'm in an Italian-American neighborhood or restaurant etc, I do feel a sense of joy and comfort from being around "my people". (But this doesn't mean I do this at anyone else's expense or because I think my tribe is any way superior to anyone else's.)"
I do not have any analogous sense of joy or comfort when being in neighborhoods where people of a particular race or "ethnicity" is predominant. I will wager though that your comfort and joy may have little do with race and more to do with familiar culture you appreciate and nostalgia. I imagine there are places in Italy you could go that just wouldnt do the same thing for you But, maybe Im wrong.
Another stark example of this could be from an African-American's perspective. They could potentially have fuzzy feelings when being in certain neighborhoods that are predominantly black, if its the sort of neighborhood they grew up in, but going to *any* African country would be a huge culture shock, and Id expect they wouldn't feel the same fuzzy feelings. If they do; if they feel "connected to their roots" -- they are projecting some serious irrational racial tribalization.
If you were in one of those Italian American restaurants and you were talking to someone there thinking "oh this person is one of my people" and then you learned he was a Greek American who was adopted by an Italian American family-- would you then feel differently about him? If not, then whatever the tribal affiliation you have is not racial. Congratulations. If you do feel differently about him, well, then you are certainly a racial tribalist. Booo.
"So my thought was/is that treating AAs as just one other group/tribe/people among many could possibly hopefully defuse social tension and bring down barriers."
I think that will just continue the same vice -- racial tribalism. One of the biggest vices among some black people, for example, is precisely the attitude that black people ought to be particularly loyal to other black people and be loyal to whatever those black people think is the proper True black culture. It is an oppressive perspective. It creates barriers.
" but I think the purpose of this piece was to try to get there by rejecting the toxic idea of race"
The simple idea of race is not toxic; racial tribalism is toxic. The notion that we have ancestral lineages that more or less overlap with one another and we can arbitrarily draw lines around these relationships and attach names to them is completely benign until people start making irrational judgements about people and loyalties to people based on how we draw the lines. And since those relationships are simply reality, even if it were toxic, I do not think a good solution would be to deny reality. Im generally opposed to reality denial.
Excellent post. I hope we can come to cherish our race and cultural differences, and recognize that being American connects us all.
Thanks for this clear exposition. As a neuroscientist I understand race as a political construct and would appreciate an opportunity to contribute to dismantle it too.
When I've taught about identity in cultural anthropology, a philosophy class titled human nature, in humanities or indigenous religions, I know I'm dealing with a puzzle--individual and shared. I end up pretty much as where Greg Thomas does, but I'm a bit more devious. For example, take the average family size (actually average household size). Let's say it is 2.2 people in 2020 in the country X. I ask my students have they ever seen a family (or household) with 2.2 people. No, of course not. But we talk about the average family all the time. There's the analytic way of statistically slicing and dicing large populations and then there's what we encounter in our lives. I'm always wondering whether our conversations on identity slip between the two -- the one that really doesn't exist (that analytic abstraction) and what we believe as we encounter others. Here, I've open the door to my devious teaching style. Let's move on to a meditation from the 13th century mystic , Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī -- or simply Rumi. He denies every facet of his identity in order to get to the true reality:
Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion
or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,
am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any
origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.
[?????]
I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.
Let's note two things. First, we can meditate ourselves out of all our identities to that "breathing human being." Most likely for a nanosecond or two. Our lived reality, psychologically and culturally defined for each of us, sucks us back into the stereotypes we've grown into. LSD also helps, but that's another story. Second, I added in some question marks [????]. You can see what's missing in all those identities that Rumi conjured up for us. He doesn't have "race" or the colors of "black" and "white." This helps us realize that our insertion of "race" into his meditation would give us our ethnocentric perspective. So, of course, we step outside that identity configuration, work at it for more than those nanoseconds, but we also resonate with forms (music, writing, family, the way we walk, etc.). I like Thomas's "rooted cosmopolitanism" where we can step in and out of cookie-cutter identity stereotypes.
As a graduate student in the 1990s-- more than fifty years after Ashley Montagu wrote Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1942)-- I was reading and teaching Ralph Ellison's "Little Man at Chehaw Station" (1978), David Hollinger's unsurpassed Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (1995), and countless critiques of "race" that concluded the race concept was hopelessly incoherent and inevitably oppressive-- a social construct we'd all be better off without. The revival of the race concept in recent years has been disheartening, given the intellectual progress made against it in earlier decades.
From an historical point of view, "race" was above all a biological concept identical to the concept of "subspecies," i.e. the observed fact when isolated from each other in different regions for long periods of time the populations within a given species can become visibly distinct from each (while still being completely interfertile). Biologists then can assign different subspecific epithets to the visually distinct groups. The literature of this topic is extremely misleading because so many pundits, including Montagu, have not understood some elementary matters. In other animals, the differences used to distinguish subspecies are very much smaller than the differences among the races of man.
Historically, going back to the 1600s and 1700s, even the most "biological" understandings of "race" were incoherently intermingled with ideas about culture and the environment. The idea that race is both "color" and "culture" survives to this day.
When clear, simple "biological understandings" are "incoherently intermingled" with anything else, then blames the "incoherent minglers" (often academics!) and those persons who are weak critical thinkers, i.e. gullible.
That an idea "survives to this day" is no indicator of its truth or validity. Consider the mythologies of all the world's religions.
David Hollinger's Postethnic America does a good job explaining this mistaken but widespread conflation of color and culture. The survival of an idea is certainly no indicator of its truth. We are in agreement.
This essay is a cool and sweet breath of fresh air. Bless you. Thank you.
I’m a big fan of Roland Fryer, but the study that you referenced that at least 1/3 of the gap between white and black workers is due to discrimination was always weird to me because it was a major outlier among the studies produced examining pay gaps with the proper controls. On a side note, in the study they say 7% of pay gap is due to discrimination, which is weird because they just said at least 33%. Even with that June E. O’Neil found that in the job market, region, test scores and all other controls reveals that 1-2% is due to racial discrimination which was backed up by Wilfred Reilly in his research. There was a recent study in 2020 by shrm that found the exact same thing, while controlling for everything except test scores or IQ scores, which does matter though I don’t believe much because controlling for education and experience filters out incompetent people. If anyone can help me answer this question, why do you think Rolands’ results are so different than these other studies, which are seemingly consistent? Other than that your article is well written and it makes a phenomenal case for deracialization, I have no complaints.
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/compensation/pages/racial-wage-gaps-persistence-poses-challenge.aspx
Is technology culture? Is one more important than the other?
Suppose SETI, Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, announced that they were picking up obviously artificial signals, something like an alien Morse code. But it was from 300 light years away. So somebody had radio 200 years before humans.
They must know something about physics and creating technology. But what about culture? They could not know Shakespeare, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus Christ. What would culture matter? They probably must have some but totally inhuman.
If we can't deal with this technology what will culture matter? Maybe we need intellectual segregation but assimilate the science and technology.
Black Man's Burden by Mack Reynolds
Free in Project Gutenberg
"If throughout the span of recorded history, human beings had always sorted based on external physical characteristics and ancestry, then a strong case could be made that this is simply the way humans classify one another. However, although the cognitive practice of categorization is common among humans, the racialization chart above makes clear that the practice was codified in the United States in the 1700s. "
While I'll concede that particular abstractions and "codifications" about race became more prominent at certain periods in history, such as the "white" and "black" abstraction, we find examples of "racialization" -- in the sense of conceiving a group of people as belonging to a common biological ancestral lineage of some sort or another throughout human history and anthropology. Perhaps most relevant to "western civilization" is the ancient greeks and jews, where we find lots of concern about genealogies and blood lines. Here is a quote from Herodotus, The Histories, where the Athenians are speaking to the Spartans:
"Such was their answer to Alexander, but to the Spartan envoys they said, “It was most human that the Lacedaemonians should fear our making an agreement with the barbarian. We think that it is an ignoble thing to be afraid, especially since we know the Athenian temper to be such that there is nowhere on earth such store of gold or such territory of surpassing fairness and excellence that the gift of it should win us to take the Persian part and enslave Hellas. [2] For there are many great reasons why we should not do this, even if we so desired; first and foremost, the burning and destruction of the adornments and temples of our gods, whom we are constrained to avenge to the utmost rather than make pacts with the perpetrator of these things, and next the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life, to all of which it would not befit the Athenians to be false." Hdt. 8.144
"Kinship in blood" is racial. The Athenians viewed the Spartans as belonging to the same blood, ie race -- the Greeks. And because of that, they suggested they would behave differently toward them. In essence a kind of racial tribalism that we still see today among people who express special loyalty to people who they think share their race. I think that is immoral, but it has existed for all of human history and through many human civilizations, from the "east" to the "west." "White" people didn't invent it in the 1700s.
And of course when it comes to Judaism, its foundational myth of Abraham and the "Chosen People" is racial. In the mythology, Abraham's biological descendants are promised land by Jehovah. Eventually, as the story goes, Moses guided the Hebrews, who were supposedly descended from Abraham, out of Egypt and into the promise land, where he and his followers proceeded to brutally murder and enslave various tribes / ethnic groups that were already living there. Racialization is *biblical*. Just as slavery is.
"On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, "'To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.'"
Genesis 15:18–21
'When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly. But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire. "For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth."
Deuteronomy 7:1-6
People were even committing racialized genocide long before the abstractions of "white" and "black" were invented. It is even recorded in the bible that the imagined god that most Americans, including most black people, worship commanded Moses to do it.
I agree with you that people should not embrace racial tribalization, but I think race as a concept is coherent insofar as it refers to the notion of some sort of wide biological lineage. Hence, the notion of a "human race" would be valid since it is the superset of all possible sets of biological lineages. But its also logically and empirically valid to arbitrarily split apart and group biological lineages and assign them a name. It might not mean much when it comes to making judgements about individuals, and it should not be used to form personal attachments, loyalties, and allegiances -- but those relationships we have to ancestors are real. Hence, "race", is a rationally coherent concept. I might think the notion of a "black" race to be morally and personally meaningless to what I value, and think that the term "black" to refer to a race of people none of whom are actually truly "black" to be a stupid choice of word as is "white" for the same reason; nonetheless, its still rational to believe that I am more "racially" related to people who are now commonly labeled as "black" than I am racially related to people who are now labeled "asian". Although, Im just as racially related to people who are now commonly labeled as "white" as I am to people who are now commonly labeled as "black." Some I will be more and some I will be less--if "racially related" simply refers to the distance, for example, before we have a common ancestor.
Thus, I think "deracialization" is somewhat limited in its rationality. Some of what you said makes sense and I support, such as decoupling culture and race, and untribalizing race--but the concept of race itself, by whatever name, can logically point to a legitimate empirical reality when formulated carefully. The "science" that is connected to and performed regarding race has tended to be garbage, and continues to be, but that is a separate consideration than whether race is rationally meaningful. Regardless of whether it is rationally meaningfully, it should not be spiritually or morally meaningful. A religion or spirituality or moral system that promotes racial tribalism should be forsaken.
Who owns the land and how did they get it? I consider land ownership to be a legal delusion just like the ownership of human beings. As long as non-white people have to work for white people to get the money to pay them to live on the land that they own/stole why should I give a damn about this racialization pseudo-intellectual crap?
It gives people with degrees something ineffectual to talk about.
Rights to land *will* be determined, ultimately, through violence and the threat of violence. I do think there are more or less virtuous ways of deciding whether violence or the threat of it will be used to protect someone's right or remove it. If there is any land in particular that you desire, perhaps you could explain to everyone why you ought to have the right to use it without others interfering or competing with that desire. And perhaps you didn't know, but some white people have to work for some black people to get the money to pay the black people to live on land that they own. Are those white people as justified as yourself to outrage? Or is land held unjustly only by white people in your mind?
The world population did not reach 1 billion until about 1800. It has tripled in my lifetime and is nearly 8 billion.
Since ownership of land is really just an idea in people's heads it should more precisely be called the control of land. It is ironically amusing that Ayn Rand came to the US from Russia with this Objectivism saying that people shouldn't just take things but that was 30 years after the Indian Wars.
We have this talk about right to life and liberty but people have to live somewhere. Maybe there should be a limit on land ownership in terms of number of locations and size.
On the global scale it is not just about White people but there is no getting around the quantity of land controlled by whites due to the last 500 years of history and technology. I do find it curious that 700 year old double-entry accounting is not mandatory in the schools even for white kids.
What does it matter if its called "ownership" or "control of land"? Personally I think ownership is fine, and it is only 3 syllables rather than 4.
What does it matter that people need to live somewhere? Do they need to live at any particular place? Would you be satisfied with land on some yet inhabited Island?
Although I am skeptical that limiting the amount of land a person can own will ensure that people have a desirable place to live, let us entertain the idea. Land ownership is limited in size -- not all land is equal in desirability though. Not all land is flowing with milk and honey. There is natural very prime real estate. Having 1 acre of prime real estate could be better than 1000 acres of garbage real estate. How would you like to be given a beach front piece of 10 acres of land in Antartica? Or would you prefer a beach front piece of 10 acres of land in Santa Monica, California?
The vast majority of land owned by white people is owned by a very small fraction of all white people -- if by "white people" you refer to people who have European ancestry. I do not understand your apparent anger at "white people" owning land, when most white people own very little of it or none at all. And, given the possession of most of land by a small percentage of people (and it is probably substantially multi racial; perhaps you are forgetting most of asia, much of africa, and much of south america; especially if you break down things more narrowly than "white"; like remember, Germany fought a war against other white people because it thought its particular slice of white people were superior and deserving of all that land it was trying to get) -- whats to be done about it? If you had the power to divy up all the land possessed by the Royal Family of Great Britain, how would you do it? Lottery? Giving land to random people whose ancestors may have been harmed by Great Britain? Who deserves the finest land of the Queen?
Regardless, I think if you are going to be upset about who possesses land today, I think you should be a lot more nuanced than looking at the race of those people. "White" people oppress "white" people. "Black" people oppress "black" people. Racial anger is irrational. And politically it is a distraction.
You can own an automobile. We all know that automobile did not exist for thousands of years before you were born and will not exist for thousands of years after you are dead. It doesn't matter very much how badly you treat the car. Humans could have to survive on this planet for the next 100,000 years.
What uninhabited island is there that is actually habitable? 8 billion people and rising. What would happen to the price of land with limits on amounts per person. The super rich could not price the land out of reach of the non-rich. That is the point.
Anger at white people?
Indian Removals
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A5P6vJs1jmY
Custer: The Monstrous Myth
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Md8u-Bp5380
That happened before I was born. But that does not mean that I do not understand that the state of the world is the result of the past. My high school history book was about 400 pages. The Amerinds got 2 pages. I remember a graph of their population. It was in the upper right corner of the left hand page.
Didn't I already make a comment about accounting not being mandatory? Not even for the white kids. See:
The Screwing of the Average Man by David Hapgood
It is not my fault if you get an exaggerated idea about my supposed "anger" at white people. These comments have their limits and I am not going to type forever on a phone.
Your references for sources of anger at white people are as rational and meaningful as a white supremacist referencing fbi violent crime statistics as source their of anger at black people.
But perhaps anger is not the correct word, but rather hate or animosity ? But you are welcome to tell me what you feel toward “white people”. I don’t think there is anything wrong with anger or hate or animosity, in essence, I just think it should be directed at reasonable targets. Nuance is usually good.
Limiting the the amount of land per person would not allow the “non rich” to purchase whatever land they wanted. It may affect land prices, but it’s not going to enable all the “non rich” to buy beach front property in Santa Monica.
It might even have undesired side effects, such as turning lots of land undeveloped or degenerate land. For land to produce and provide value, it must be developed, and not just anyone has the resources, knowledge, or skills to do that or to do it as well as others. And when land becomes wildly unproductive, that will actually increase the costs of stuff in general, and may actually make the “non rich” even less “non rich”.
Im not against land ownership limits in essence though, there might be some limitations that could do a lot of overall good and be more just. It simply isn’t without substantial risks if done badly. I’d have to think about the details more.
Feelings are irrelevant! We are stuck in the global power games that involve technology and economics and sometimes go military.
Ever heard of: Black Man's Burden by Mack Reynolds
It's free in Project Gutenberg. Oh, Reynolds was a white guy, raised in a socialist family.
I consider technology, economics and planned obsolescence more important than social arguments about race. European culture is designed to screw over most white people. Watching the Russian army in the Ukraine is almost funny.
The Screwing of the Average Man by David Hapgood
Black kids don't get enough practical support from their elders. What did MLK & Malcolm X ever say about science, technology and economics?
While your discussion is mainly focused on the US context I think you make an important point that applies around the world. Thank you Greg for articulating so clearly what I've felt for a while. The idea of "race" as biological or cultural identity makes less and less sense as more and more threads of human genetics and human culture entwine with the high mobility of humans in the modern age. This will keep happening like it has been for millennia to such a point where these arbitrary distinctions of "black" & "white" are not only meaningless, they're patently false.
We can see an example of this in the absurd distinction of black & white in the census question (image in the article) where it lists "Egyptian" as among the choices of the "White" races - Egypt is in Africa and has a very ancient culture rooted in historical Africa. And there has been at least 3000 years of various ethnicities and genetic lines mixing in Egypt since it was the centre of the civilised world for so long. I know that a lot of political-intellectual forces have tried to deny this so they can claim Ancient Egyptian culture for the "White Man" and I guess this weird distortion in the census is a left over of that ... My point is that I see a lot of "dark-skinned" Egyptian-born people in Egypt and elsewhere, and being such a cultural and biological "melting pot" how can Egyptians be classified as "Whites"?
I understand the necessity to reclaim identities that have been culturally maligned and devalued, and yet if we also work towards societies where no economic or social advantages accrue to any based on their "race" then there is no need to identify as a race. And I agree with you that this doesn't eradicate cultural or ethnic lineages - but we do get to release stereotypes and ideas that have reached their use-by-date.